By James
Slack
Labour threw open the doors to mass migration in a deliberate policy to
change the social make-up of the
A
draft report from the Cabinet Office shows that ministers wanted to ‘maximise
the contribution’ of migrants to their ‘social objectives’.
The
number of foreigners allowed in the UK increased by as much as 50 per cent in
the wake of the report, written in 2000.
Labour
has always justified immigration on economic grounds and denied it was using it
to foster multiculturalism.
But
suspicions of a secret agenda rose when Andrew Neather, a former government
adviser and speech writer for Tony Blair, Jack Straw and David Blunkett, said
the aim of Labour’s immigration strategy was to ‘rub the Right’s nose in
diversity and render their arguments out of date’.
Mr
Neather said he helped to write the 2000 report which outlined a strategy to
‘open up the
The
document was not published in its original format over fears of an adverse
public reaction. Instead it was released a year later as a research document on
the economic benefits of migration.
Mr
Neather’s claims last October were denied by ministers, including Justice
Secretary Jack Straw, who said they were nonsense.
A
draft of the original Cabinet Office report has now been published following a
freedom of information request by Migrationwatch.
It
contains six references to social policy, all of which were removed from the
later, published version.
One
deleted paragraph said a framework was needed to ‘maximise the contribution of
migration to the Government’s social and economic objectives’.
Another
says that migration pressures will intensify because of demographic changes
across
It
states: ‘The entry control system is not closely related to the stated policy
objectives.
This
is particularly true in the social area, where in the past the implicit
assumption has largely been that keeping people out promotes stability.’
Also
cut out was a statement that ‘in practice, entry controls can contribute to
social exclusion’.
Damian
Green, Tory immigration spokesman, said: ‘This is a very significant finding
because it would mean that Labour’s biggest long term effect on British society
was
based on a completely secret policy.
‘This
shows Labour’s open-door immigration policy was deliberate and ministers should
apologise.’
Mr
Neather’s claims were made in a column for the London Evening Standard. He said
Labour’s relaxation of immigration controls was a deliberate attempt to
engineer a ‘truly multicultural’ country and plug gaps in the jobs market.
He
remembered ‘coming away from some discussions with the clear sense that the
policy was intended – even if this wasn’t its main purpose – to rub the Right’s
nose in diversity’.
The
figures for net foreign immigration– the number of non-British citizens
arriving, less the number leaving – are even more dramatic.
In
2001, this figure stood at 221,000 but by 2007 it had risen as high as 333,000
– up 50 per cent.
The
number fell to 250,000 in 2008 mainly because of a decline in arrivals from
It
had already emerged that the Cabinet Office report was censored to remove
details of possible links between immigration and organised crime, street
fights and begging.
One
of the sections missing from the final report said: ‘There is emerging evidence
that the circumstances in which asylum seekers are living is leading to
criminal offences, including fights and begging.’
A
second section warned: ‘Migration has opened up new opportunities for organised
crime.’
Last
night, immigration minister Phil Woolas said there was ‘no open door policy on
migration’.
He
said the draft report made clear that migration was ‘not a substitute for
Government policies on skills, education and training of British citizens –
which the Government has invested in over the past decade’.
So
there was indeed a Labour conspiracy to change the nature of our society by
mass immigration.
New
evidence confirms claims made by a Labour political adviser last October which
he subsequently tried to recant.
In
an article for the Evening Standard, Andrew Neather revealed that ‘it didn’t
just happen: the deliberate policy of ministers from late 2000 until at least
February last year ...was to open up the UK to mass migration’.
He
went on to describe a Government policy document which he had helped to write
in 2000.
He
said that ‘drafts were handed out in summer 2000 only with extreme reluctance:
there was paranoia about it reaching the media’.
The
paper eventually surfaced as a purely technical product of the research
department of the Home Office but earlier drafts that he saw ‘included a
driving political purpose: that mass immigration was the way that the
Government was going to make the UK truly multicultural’.
We
in Migrationwatch have now obtained an earlier draft of that policy paper,
circulated in October 2000.
It
had already been censored but it was to be neutered still further. In the
executive summary, six of eight references to ‘social’ objectives were cut from
the version later published.
What
could have been meant by social policy in the context of immigration,
especially as it was dressed up as combating social exclusion?
This
must surely have been code for increasing the numbers substantially, as Mr
Neather revealed. If not, why all the secrecy?
Why
the censorship that has now been laid bare? Reading between the lines of these
documents it is clear that political advisers in Number 10, its joint authors,
were preparing a blueprint for mass immigration with both economic and social
objectives.
None
of this was in the Labour manifesto of 1997 or 2001. One passage in the report
that the political censors failed to cut was a prediction about foreign immigration
from outside the European Union.
This
had it climbing from 142,000 in1998 to nearly 180,000 in 2005 (in fact, it
reached nearly 200,000 by that date).
But
what this shows is that ministers were clearly warned about a continuing rise
in immigration which, even leaving aside the East Europeans, has been even
greater than expected.
So
what can we deduce from all this? Mr Neather later withdrew some of his remarks
but examination of the texts shows that he had, in fact, blurted out the truth.
It
seems there was a project led by
a secret policy of mass immigration.
Their
economic arguments surfaced in an obscure research document but the social
objective of greatly increased diversity was entirely suppressed for fear of
public reaction – especially from the white working class.
These
are the very people who are now paying the price for a decade of Labour
deception. What the Government now fears is that they will take their revenge
on election day.
Why
on earth should they have taken such a risk with their traditional supporters?
Was it pure ideology or were there other factors at play?
One
point to consider is the impact on the electorate. It is not generally realised
that
Commonwealth citizens legally in
as soon as they put their names on the electoral register.
In
Labour years we have now seen an additional 300,000 from the
They
may well have been conscious that they have much stronger support among the
ethnic communities than their Conservative rivals.
Given
that mass immigration is heavily in Labour’s electoral interest, they may have
thought that they could get away with it.
The
trades unions have been silent despite the concerns of their members. And they
may have calculated that anyone who opposed it could be silenced by accusations
of racism.
They
have not succeeded but we are left with a tale of betrayal which has generated
a very dangerous current of extremism which could yet come to haunt us.